WACREN is the West and Central African Research and Education Network which aims to provide a World-class infrastructure and services for the West and Central African Research and Education community for development.

The need to build organizational and technical capacity within constituent National Research and Education Network (NREN) countries was identified as a requirement for a viable network.

A regional consultative meeting to form a Regional Research and Education Network (RREN) was held in November 2009 as a pre-event to the Open Access Conference in 2009. The AAU was given the mandate to identify a Task Team to coordinate activities of working groups to produce documents for the establishment of the RREN.